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About

About

João Gama is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Economy, University of Porto. He is a researcher and vice-director of LIAAD, a group belonging to INESC TEC. He got the PhD degree from the University of Porto, in 2000. He is a IEEE Fellow and EurIA Fellow.

He has worked on several National and European projects on Incremental and Adaptive learning systems, Ubiquitous Knowledge Discovery, Learning from Massive, and Structured Data, etc. He served as Co-Program chair of ECML'2005, DS'2009, ADMA'2009, IDA' 2011, ECMLPKDD'2015, and ECMLPKDD 2025. He served as track chair on Data Streams with ACM SAC from 2007 till 2016. He organized a series of Workshops on Knowledge Discovery from Data Streams with ECML/PKDD, and Knowledge Discovery from Sensor Data with ACM SIGKDD. He is the author of several books on Data Mining (in Portuguese) and authored a monograph on Knowledge Discovery from Data Streams. He authored more than 250 peer-reviewed papers in areas related to machine learning, data mining, and data streams. He is a member of the editorial board of international journals ML, DMKD, TKDE, IDA, NGC, and KAIS. He (co-)supervised more than 12 PhD students and 50 MSc students.

Interest
Topics
Details

Details

  • Name

    João Gama
  • Role

    Research Coordinator
  • Since

    01st April 2009
019
Publications

2025

Early Failure Detection for Air Production Unit in Metro Trains

Authors
Zafra, A; Veloso, B; Gama, J;

Publication
HYBRID ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT SYSTEM, PT I, HAIS 2024

Abstract
Early identification of failures is a critical task in predictive maintenance, preventing potential problems before they manifest and resulting in substantial time and cost savings for industries. We propose an approach that predicts failures in the near future. First, a deep learning model combining long short-term memory and convolutional neural network architectures predicts signals for a future time horizon using real-time data. In the second step, an autoencoder based on convolutional neural networks detects anomalies in these predicted signals. Finally, a verification step ensures that a fault is considered reliable only if it is corroborated by anomalies in multiple signals simultaneously. We validate our approach using publicly available Air Production Unit (APU) data from Porto metro trains. Two significant conclusions emerge from our study. Firstly, experimental results confirm the effectiveness of our approach, demonstrating a high fault detection rate and a reduced number of false positives. Secondly, the adaptability of this proposal allows for the customization of configuration of different time horizons and relationship between the signals to meet specific detection requirements.

2025

Decision-making systems improvement based on explainable artificial intelligence approaches for predictive maintenance

Authors
Rajaoarisoa, L; Randrianandraina, R; Nalepa, GJ; Gama, J;

Publication
ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract
To maintain the performance of the latest generation of onshore and offshore wind turbine systems, a new methodology must be proposed to enhance the maintenance policy. In this context, this paper introduces an approach to designing a decision support tool that combines predictive capabilities with anomaly explanations for effective IoT predictive maintenance tasks. Essentially, the paper proposes an approach that integrates a predictive maintenance model with an explicative decision-making system. The key challenge is to detect anomalies and provide plausible explanations, enabling human operators to determine the necessary actions swiftly. To achieve this, the proposed approach identifies a minimal set of relevant features required to generate rules that explain the root causes of issues in the physical system. It estimates that certain features, such as the active power generator, blade pitch angle, and the average water temperature of the voltage circuit protection in the generator's sub-components, are particularly critical to monitor. Additionally, the approach simplifies the computation of an efficient predictive maintenance model. Compared to other deep learning models, the identified model provides up to 80% accuracy in anomaly detection and up to 96% for predicting the remaining useful life of the system under study. These performance metrics and indicators values are essential for enhancing the decision-making process. Moreover, the proposed decision support tool elucidates the onset of degradation and its dynamic evolution based on expert knowledge and data gathered through Internet of Things (IoT) technology and inspection reports. Thus, the developed approach should aid maintenance managers in making accurate decisions regarding inspection, replacement, and repair tasks. The methodology is demonstrated using a wind farm dataset provided by Energias De Portugal.

2025

Fairness Analysis in Causal Models: An Application to Public Procurement

Authors
Teixeira, S; Nogueira, AR; Gama, J;

Publication
MACHINE LEARNING AND PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN DATABASES, ECML PKDD 2023, PT II

Abstract
Data-driven decision models based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been widely used in the public and private sectors. These models present challenges and are intended to be fair, effective and transparent in public interest areas. Bias, fairness and government transparency are aspects that significantly impact the functioning of a democratic society. They shape the government's and its citizens' relationship, influencing trust, accountability, and the equitable treatment of individuals and groups. Data-driven decision models can be biased at several process stages, contributing to injustices. Our research purpose is to understand fairness in the use of causal discovery for public procurement. By analysing Portuguese public contracts data, we aim i) to predict the place of execution of public contracts using the PC algorithm with sp-mi, smc-chi(2) and mc-chi(2) conditional independence tests; ii) to analyse and compare the fairness in those scenarios using Predictive Parity Rate, Proportional Parity, Demographic Parity and Accuracy Parity metrics. By addressing fairness concerns, we pursue to enhance responsible data-driven decision models. We conclude that, in our case, fairness metrics make an assessment more local than global due to causality pathways. We also observe that the Proportional Parity metric is the one with the lowest variance among all metrics and one with the highest precision, and this reinforces the observation that the Agency category is the one that is furthest apart in terms of the proportion of the groups.

2025

Anomaly Detection in Pet Behavioural Data

Authors
Silva, I; Ribeiro, RP; Gama, J;

Publication
MACHINE LEARNING AND PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN DATABASES, ECML PKDD 2023, PT II

Abstract
Pet owners are increasingly becoming conscious of their pet's necessities and are paying more attention to their overall wellness. The well-being of their pets is intricately linked to their own emotional and physical well-being. Some veterinary system solutions are emerging to provide proactive healthcare options for pets. One such solution offers the continuous monitoring of a pet's activity through accelerometer tracking devices. Based on data collected by this application, in this paper, we study different time aggregation and three unsupervised machine learning techniques to identify anomalies in pet behaviour data. Specifically, three algorithms, Isolation Forest, Local Outlier Factor, and K-Nearest Neighbour, with various thresholds to differentiate between normal and abnormal events. Results conducted on ten pets (five cats and five dogs) show that the most effective approach is to use daily data divided into periods. Moreover, the Local Outlier Factor is the best algorithm for detecting anomalies when prioritizing the identification of true positives. However, it also produces a high false positive ratio.

2025

Data Science for Fighting Environmental Crime

Authors
Barbosa, M; Ribeiro, C; Gomes, F; Ribeiro, RP; Gama, J;

Publication
MACHINE LEARNING AND PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY IN DATABASES, ECML PKDD 2023, PT II

Abstract
The rise of environmental crimes has become a major concern globally as they cause significant damage to ecosystems, public health and result in economic losses. The availability of vast sensor data provides an opportunity to analyze environmental data proactively. This helps to detect irregularities and uncover potential criminal activities. This paper highlights the critical role played by machine learning (ML) and remote sensing technologies in the continuously evolving scenarios of environmental crime. By examining some case studies on detecting illegal fishing, illegal oil spills, illegal landfills, and illegal logging, we delve into the practical implementation of data-driven approaches for environmental crime detection. Our goal with this study is to provide an overview of the existing research in this area and foster the use of ML and data science techniques to enhance environmental crime detection.

Supervised
thesis

2023

Building an automated MLOps pipeline and recommending an open-source stack to deploy a Machine Learning Application

Author
William Inouye Almeida

Institution
UP-FEP

2023

Time series Forecasting using a Game Theoretical Decision Model with Estimators obtained by Machine Learning Techniques

Author
João Filipe Costa Freitas

Institution
UP-FEP

2023

Instalação e validação de algoritmos no NDtech para deteção de anomalias

Author
Gustavo Nuno Prata Baldaia

Institution
UP-FEP

2023

Clustering Massive, Noisy, and Unstructured Textual Streams

Author
Cesar Henrique Goersch Andrade

Institution
UP-FEP

2023

A Comparative Study Between Explanation Approaches for models of Increasing Complexity: A casestudyusing Industry Data

Author
Rafael de Carvalho Maia Parente Mamede

Institution
UP-FEP